Perfidy [Hardcover]

In brief, the story goes like this, Malchiel Greenwald charged Kastner with collaboration in Hungary. Kastner at the behest of the Ben Gurion government sued for libel. Alas Greenwald's attorney, Shmuel Tamir staged a spirited defense and the honor of established Zionist organizations during the Holocaust was challenged. Kastner lost the libel suit, appealed, lost again. And when faced with the possibility of being convicted under Israel's anti-collaboration law (the one Eichmann was convicted under), he was convenient "assasinated."

Along the way Hecht shares many stories just beginning to be written about in english including Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl's "Europa Plan" and the death of Hanah Szenes. As well as his rather celebratory accounts of Irgun terrorists against the British in Palestine. (I use the term not in condemnation, Irgunists routinely embraced it)

There are many levels in which this book can be read. It can be appreciated as a polemic against the establishment zionism of Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. It can be read as a powerful cautionary tale against nation-states. It can be read as a despairing anguished cry over a humanity that seems hell-bent for nuclear annihilation.

The value for all people who care about the State of Israel is that this was the first--and for a long time only--comprehensive account of this defining moment in Israeli history.
To this very day, public airing of this controversy in english, is discouraged. Jim Allen sought to dramatize the story in his play PERDITION and, in 1987, was twice shut down by major Jewish organizations and was subjected to a libel action by a minor figure in a telling re-play of the original Kastner affair. The action was not sustained, a reading of the play was put on at a community center. (A full account can be found in Uri Davis's book CROSSING THE BORDER.)

On the other hand, Hecht is so close to his subject. Everything is black and white. While he celebrates Irgun actions against the British, he has nothing to say concerning actions against the Palestinians. The name Deir Yassin is never mentioned.

Likewise, by Hecht's reckoning it was the Irgun, and the Irgun only that won palestine for the jewish state. But the establishment of Israel was not just a military triumph but a diplomatic one as well. Without Weizmann cultivating the British and Ben Gurion cultivating the US, there would have been no Balfour declaration, no mandate for the establishment for a jewish state at Versailles, no US support for UN partition, and no US instantaneous recognition for Israel in 1948.

In the interest of balance, it is probably a good idea to compare his account with the relevant section in Tom Segev's THE SEVENTH MILLION. Also for a fuller account of Weissmandl activities and his charges against the established Zionist organizations see THE UNHEEDED CRY. For a scholarly, critical account of rescue efforts and charges of zionist non-cooperation one should see Yehuda Bauer's JEWS FOR SALE. Finally, one should probably look at Trotskyite Lenni Brenner's ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF DICTATORS, while strident and tendentious, there is a mass of devastating information in the book.